York Museums Trust Blog

The latest from our curatorial bulletins, this is from the Military Historian, Keith:

This chocolate tin was presented by the Mayor and Sheriff of York to a soldier from York for Christmas 1914. This act of generosity, presenting all servicemen from York with a Christmas gift, was helped by the Sheriff being Oscar Rowntree, of the chocolate firm. What makes this tin very special is that the recipient resisted temptation and kept the contents intact. To the servicemen this was a very welcome gift. Most were not regular soldiers or sailors having joined the forces in the patriotic fervour of war breaking out in August. Many were away from their home city for the first time.

The realities of modern warfare were beginning to reveal themselves – such as static trench warfare, mass artillery bombardments, submarine warfare and use of aeroplanes. The promise of being ‘home by Christmas’ was not happening. The arrival of the gift was a real boost. This is shown in letters to the Mayor’s office now held in the Local History Section of York Library. Many recipients wrote to thank the Mayor and Sheriff for their gift, some wrote asking for more! Once the true nature and scale of the war was realised such gestures became rare. There was no similar gift in 1915.

Seeing as it’s late October, what better time to talk about spooky happenings at the Castle Museum. No, not the janitor in a ghost costume about to be unmasked by those meddling kids and their strange mutant dog , but genuine spooky going-ons witnessed (allegedly) by many staff over the years.

As you may or may not know, the Castle Museum is housed in two eighteenth-century prison buildings, so if anywhere is going to be haunted, this is the place.

The most common supernatural happenings are actually sounds – more specifically people singing. A few years ago, a local TV news crew were filming after hours in Kirkgate (the Victorian Street) and asked staff to turn off the sound effects in the gallery which overlooks it. The guide went up the stairs to the closed doors and could hear women singing. But when he opened the doors, it abruptly stopped and when he checked the equipment, the sound effects were already off.

On another occasion, Des, our Health and Safety Manager volunteered to stay in the Condemned Cell on his own overnight for charity. Bear in mind that this is the cell where criminals such as Dick Turpin spent their last night on Earth before going to meet their maker at the end of the hangman’s rope. Anyway, Des had settled in with his laptop for company when he heard people singing. He assumed it was Dave (one of the guides and a bit of a joker), who had sneaked in and was playing a trick on him. It wasn’t. Des checked everywhere but couldn’t find the source of the singing, at which point discretion got the better part of valour and he fled up to the offices for a cup of coffee and some nice bright anti-ghost fluorescent light.

Various spooks have also been seen. A little dog has been spotted a number of times by both staff and visitors and one of the guides once saw a lady in Victorian dress. When he went to look for her, there was no sign of her and this was in the days before staff were dressed up for Kirkgate.

Another time, a teacher with a school party approached a guide in a very agitated and flustered state, saying there was an old woman sitting in one of the hearths, but again, she had disappeared when he got there.

A little boy in 1930’s or ’40s clothes has been seen a few times on the Military Gallery, sometimes just disappearing around the corner so you can’t quite be sure you saw him properly…

Because of all this supernatural activity, the museum has become quite famous for its spooks and this has attracted a number of ghosthunters over the years. Most famously was Derek Akorah last year, filming his Ghost Towns series, though he didn’t find anything definite. Before that, a group came in to do an overnight vigil and Dave (he of the pranks) stayed with them. He left them to their own devices for a few hours then went to check on them. When he found them, they were obviously spooked (no pun intended). They said they had been up to the old prison chapel (now the Cradle to Grave Gallery) but refused to return as there was “too much activity”! Apparently, their psychic said there was the spirit of an “Angry Vicar” in there and it was far too frightening for them to go back up. This group also photographed orbs on Kirkgate, which are apparently manifestations of spirits and we still have the photo.

Whatever the truth of all these sightings, I have yet to see or hear anything myself in the three years I’ve worked at the Castle, but I can definitely vouch for the spookiness of the buildings at times.

It’s not so bad when we’re open and busy with visitors, but when you’re all on your own, unlocking at 7am in the dark on a cold winter’s morning or last to leave in the evening, well then, it’s just you and over 300 years of history and all those long dead prison inmates.

That’s when the hairs on the back of your neck stand up…

I went down to the Yorkshire Museum today and was in for a big surprise!

All these fantastic demonstrations were by modern day professionals who used their specialist knowledge, together with information from the Museum, to try to recreate lost skills.

A link to more info on the: Community Archaeology Project.

If there was a squirrel Olympics in Beijing next year, I am sure the Museum Gardens could send a winning team. Every day I can sit at my desk and watch at least one of these supreme athletes running up and down the rooftops outside our office in the Yorkshire Museum. Why are they doing it? There are no stores of acorns hidden away beneath the slate roof tiles or even bars of nutty chocolate in the guttering, but they always seem intent on completing some kind of vital, urgent task.

No chance of childhood squirrel obesity with the level of exercise they maintain – although maybe they are pushing the boundaries of fat intake on the footpaths of the gardens. There they boldly approach people walking through the gardens for any scrap of food they can spare. Despite the fact many refer to them as ‘tree rats’, the squirrels get away with this behaviour because they are so cute, rubbing their little hands together pleadingly and waggling their bushy tails, before scampering off for a good scoff.

Some people even get their camera out to capture the moment on film. It’s as if they think they have had a David Attenborough experience and want to keep a memento of the day they saw such a rare species. The irony is, of course, that the grey squirrel is a very common creature in this country, having largely elbowed out its rarer cousin, the native red squirrel. I remember getting as excited as our garden visitors when I saw one in the Lake District, but scared it off with the noise of opening my camera case.

The curators here have just finished a new exhibition called Aliens, about non-native animals that have made their home in the UK, and it gives the low-down on grey squirrels. But to see the real thing, you don’t have to go far outside to enjoy the sight of non-stop squirrel activity in the Museum Gardens. 

Following a nation-wide competition, we’re going to be receiving some special visitors the weekend after next - the winners of the Young Archaeologist of the Year Award, which is run by the Young Archaeologist’s Club. The winners are going to come for a VIP visit to the Yorkshire Museum stores, and will be able to see and handle all sorts of objects which aren’t usually on display. I’m really looking forward to it because we are going to ask them to pick a few objects each, which will go on display in the museum foyer. I can’t wait to see what they choose!

Naked women, autopsies, Dick Turpin and strange stone heads – quite a random selection of words really. In fact if you got those words in a pub quiz and had to find the common link it could take you a while to come up with an answer, although a pint or two may speed up the process. However I can pretty much guess that York Museums Trust would not be the first thing most people would think of. The reality is all these things have been filmed at one of our venues in the last month or so. Film crews seem to like the place. The above are just some of the more bizarre, but they are all true. 
How to Look Good Naked took over the Castle Museum, causing a few eyebrows to be raised as the underwear fell. The History Channel carried out a fake autopsy in The Lab, using big knives and animal innards to show how a young Egyptian girl died before she was mummified. Channel Five came to the Castle’s cells while filming a Dick Turpin documentary and the BBC came to speak to Andrew Morrison, curator of archaeology, about mysterious stone heads which were appearing and then disappearing in the wilds of rural Yorkshire. Poor folk in places like Bishop Wilton, Goathland and Kilburn were apparently scared to death by the strange rocks which were placed under the cover of darkness.
The film crews, like the rocks, also appear, cause a stir and then vanish into the night. Some come with space age technology, others have a camcorder. Some forget their camcorder. Most have at least one member of staff who wears thick rimmed glasses and has a clipboard.
The Trust’s benefits a lot from the crews and their cameras. There is the obvious financial benefits and then there is that all important mention. Of course any show that has millions of viewers is brilliant publicity.
I just hope that visitors to the Castle Museum don’t expect to see quite so much as they do the next time its on the telly.

2008 is going to be an exciting year for York Castle Museum – its the museum’s 70th anniversary, there’ll be a major new exhibition – The Sixties – and three new ‘get-involved’ spaces (the Kitchen, Wardrobe and Armoury) to complement the Victorian Street.

Visitors have told us they find the museum friendly, relaxed, authentic and even an emotional experience (they also made a few less complimentary comments, but that’s another story).

We’ve been scratching our heads as to how to summarise all this good stuff in a single strapline for the museum.

Even my wife Maria has got the bug – last night’s best was ‘Welcome to Your Past’, or ‘Welcome to Our Past’.

Comments – and ideas – are very welcome.

This is from our internal ‘Collections Snapshot’ by Katherine:

Sometimes objects which don’t make the best photographs are really exciting. This Roman glass vessel is around 2000 years old, made of really thin and delicate glass and yet is virtually complete. It’s unusually large for this type of vessel, and we’re not sure what it was used for – perhaps for cosmetics, or oil, or even offerings. After being placed into a grave, it was not disturbed until the railway station was built at the end of the 19th century.

On Saturday I spent the day in Pickering, it was War Weekend!! The whole town goes back to 1943 and it’s absolutely wonderful, Brown Criss Cross tape on shop windows, Careless Talk Posters on Lamp posts. Everyone dressed in authentic costume, the women looked wonderful with fully fashioned seamed stockings, hats and gloves, really smart. Loads of guys in Uniform RAF, Naval, Army, G.I. even Polish and Russian uniforms. Yours truly was dressed as a British Army Officer and I think looked pretty good. Vera Lynn, Anne Shelton, George Formby and loads more stars of the time were being played everywhere you went. It was just like being in a huge walking, talking, breathing museum and we were all part of it. If you went to the station and were in authentic dress you could go on the far platform and mingle with everyone else you really felt you had gone back in time. Over on the other platform those in 2007 clothing were all watching us, beacuse really I suppose we were re-enactors. I had a fantastic day and look forward to the next time I can visit 1943.

Last week I went caving.  It was not a stroll in the park.  A stroll in the park would’ve been nice.  Even in the rain.  It didn’t rain in the cave.  It didn’t have to.  I still got wet right up to my oxters (the spell check doesn’t like ‘oxters’. I don’t suppose computers have any.) 

My son, Finn, went caving with school last year and loved it, so my husband arranged for a friend of ours to take Finn and his sister, Esme, caving with her.  She invited other friends’ kids along too, and the upshot was that she needed an extra adult.  Richard, my husband, suffers from horrendous claustrophobia even in spacious, floodlit show caves with stalagmites named ‘the witches hat’ and ‘the grumpy elf’.  So I had to go.  It was as bad as I expected, such that, standing in the middle of a car park afterwards, in the rain, peeling off sodden clothes beneath a damp towel was, by comparison, a delightful experience.  When I got home, physically trembling from a combination of shock, exhaustion and hypothermia, Richard beamed and said, “That makes up for all those visits to the Abbey Museum I’ve had to endure.”

How can that be?  How can caving compare with the occasional trip to our local museum?  I was dumbstruck. Anyhow, I now have to consider that if there is even a shred of truth in his comparison, I have to accept that not everyone enjoys repeat visits to museums and galleries in the way I do.  Are we expecting too much of the people of York when we ask them to visit the Gallery again and again?     

Could we threaten to send them caving instead?